No more litter, ever!

CLEAN ROADS, CLEAN WATERWAYS, CLEAN SEAS, CLEAN BEACHES

Whereas the key to ending littering is national, the solution to no more litter is local.

Littering (the habit) is a cultural trait that needs to be tackled at the national level. The key to success is to change the littering culture.

Litter (the eyesore, the rubbish on the ground right now) is a local problem (albeit with a global impact) and is most effectively tackled by local people. The key to success is to change the litter-picking culture.

But First, WHY NOT LEAVE LITTER TO THE COUNCIL TO PICK UP?

It’s important to appreciate that your district council will pick up litter but ONLY IF there is an accumulation AND IF you ask them to do so AND IF they think it is bad enough to arrange for a rolling roadblock or closure - and this can take months. It costs them (and you) for them to do so since it can be a mammoth operation.

So litter tends to stay put till you pick it up. Most parishes suffer the litter for months and only pick it up once or twice a year. A parish’s default state is therefore littered and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Britain has the worst litter problem in the world.

how we change the litter-picking culture

Sometimes, changing the lexicon can help change the way actions (or people) are viewed… and by extension, the culture. Consequently, to underline the importance to waterways and the wider environment of intercepting litter, we talk about being parish pikkers (success = very little litter found on each pik) and not litter pickers (success = lots of litter found on each pick). “Pikker” means protector of the holy river in Estonian mythology. It’s a hard-won title because it means allowing zero litter to enter our rivers.

Of course, words need to be backed up by action. So a #pristineparish means the entire parish is pikked twice a week. For this to happen, we help parishes change their litter-picking culture by setting up a #pristineparish program for them, the first being Little Rissington in 2018. At the heart of the program is the Goldilocks Regime.

The Goldilocks Regime described by gray elkington, eden founder

“Returning from a stay in Shanghai in late 2017, I was so shocked by the state of the Cotswolds compared to the pristine district I’d been living in that I set about cleaning up my neighbourhood, singlehandedly. Wanting it to be as pristine as Shanghai, I kept increasing the frequency and range of my picks through 2018 until I was doing two per week of my entire parish road network. I found that if I were to allow myself a day either side of the scheduled day to do a pick, I could be sure to do it without fail.

“This is how I stumbled on the Goldilocks Regime: two 3-day windows in any one week to de-litter the same stretch of road was both the minimum acceptable and the maximum possible. I’d achieved peak performance for a volunteer - a 7-day week can’t accommodate any more than two 3-day windows.”

Were an AI program set the task of determining the optimal 3-day windows, we believe it would settle on ones centred on Tuesdays and Saturdays.

Exercise combined with community service

Once the legacy litter has been cleared, the task becomes a pleasurable brisk ‘walk with purpose’ along set routes in the parish by individuals working alone who choose a day of the week (approx. 3.5 days after the last pik) and a time of day that suits them to go pikking - with no need to assemble a team of volunteers on a set (perhaps rainy) day and no need for expensive rolling roadblocks. To count as done on time, a pik can be done on the scheduled day or a day either side to allow for inclement weather or the unexpected. When a pikker uploads their litter photo, their pik changes from red to green. When all piks have been completed, all eleven piks change to blue and their parish turns from Palm Green to Royal Blue on the Eden Everywhere map.

Community Building

Litter picking has traditionally been an important exercise in community building. Likewise with the #pristineparish program.

Although we don't congregate once a year before heading off to pik, we aim to congregate once a year for a well-earned party.

The rest of the year, we are out in the lanes and streets most days bumping into people, building relationships and restoring faith in our community.

The benefits of the #pristineparish program

1. All animals - which includes us - will enjoy a pristine parish all year round

2. It takes a little more time but a lot less effort than an annual litter pick

3. It can be done at a brisk pace, and so doubles as exercise

4. It really cheers people up, both participants and passers-by!

5. A sense of community grows as people get to know each other

6. It leads to cleaner beaches for you, your friends and your family*

   * Because parish litter ends up as beach litter

We nudge, parish by parish

Our vision is a #pristineplanet. And our mission is to achieve that parish by parish. When land is divided into small, distinct segments, like a parish, people are more likely to feel responsible for it. (CleanUp Britain, 2016)

Environments that are clean nudge people to use bins, whereas environments that are unclean nudge them to litter more (Dur & Vollaard, 2013).

Cialdini, Reno and Kallgren (1990) conducted a series of studies in which they explored the role of social norms on littering behaviour. They confirmed the importance of a clean environment in promoting anti-littering behaviour. As long as there were just one or two pieces of litter in an area, most people did not litter (78% and 90% of people, respectively, used bins). However, as soon as there were three of more pieces visible, the number of litterers increased to 41%.

They also reported that seeing other people pick up litter is a strong anti-littering nudge.

Certainly, seeing The Ocean Cleanup team working to clear the ocean gyres of plastic by 2030 is a big nudge for us to stop plastic flowing into the seas by then.

So we have till 2030 to change the culture globally. Yes, it looks like an impossible challenge, but those are the ones worth fighting for and we have the resolve.

Enrol your parish

If you would like to enrol your parish in our free #pristineparish program, contact us below and we’ll get in touch with you to help you get it up and running. Or if there is already a program running in your parish, tell us the name of your parish, and we’ll put you in touch with the organiser.

Like pristine beaches?